


The House That Was

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-09
Updated: 2011-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>F is for Funeral</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House That Was

John comes home one day to find Sherlock playing the violin -- not the disconnected wildness of passionate boredom, or the angry shrieks of a fight with Mycroft, but something like a storm.

He makes tea, goes out to dinner, comes home again. Sherlock is still playing, but he stops when John sits down. "John," Sherlock says, "do you have clothes for a funeral?"

"Yes," says John. "Who's died?"

"My eldest brother," Sherlock says. "Mycroft insists I go to the funeral."

"If only to spit on the grave," says Mycroft, from a dark corner. John jumps out of his skin; he hadn't known Mycroft was there.

"Will you spit with me?" Sherlock asks, his eyes narrow, his face twisted.

"I always have," Mycroft says, and stands, a long animal shamble to his full height. Where Sherlock is drawn, his limbs controlled, Mycroft is loose. Something about his gait and the snake of his neck has always set John's teeth on edge; he prefers Sherlock's focus and neatness. When Sherlock is bored, spiralling downwards, he becomes loose-limbed, like his brother; his precision is as learned as John's own military-square shoulders.

He hears footsteps, and Mycroft's assistant appears, two men at her heels. Each of them carries an overnight case. "All packed, sir," she says, and Mycroft nods; he turns to his brother and gestures at the door.

"Sherlock."

Sherlock sets the violin down, carefully, and puts on his coat.

"John," says Mycroft, and John looks at Sherlock, but Sherlock is frozen in the door, head down, waiting. John frowns down at his hands. He doesn't mind, anymore, being at Sherlock's beck and call, but he doesn't much care to be at Mycroft's.

After a moment, Mycroft says "John. Please." He tilts his head on its snakelike neck at Sherlock, who is holding inhumanly still.

John stands. He's wearing his jacket; he assumes anything else he'll need is in the overnight case. He follows the two men, Mycroft's assistant, Mycroft, and Sherlock out the door.

* * *   
The deceased eldest brother's home is stately, drafty, and gracefully decaying; there is a housekeeper who glances from Sherlock to John to Mycroft. Mycroft tilts his chin, and she leads John and Sherlock to the same bedroom. John is about to protest when Sherlock brushes his fingers, almost too lightly to feel, against the back of John's hand. Instead, he nods the housekeeper out of the room and unpacks their bags himself. Sherlock undresses, to undershirt and boxers, and stretches out on the bed.

John is hanging up his black suit when Sherlock finally speaks. "My brother's name was Sherrinford," he says, "and everything I know about acting like a sociopath, I learned from him." John walks over to the bed and looks down at Sherlock, who looks back up impassively. John feels a thousand questions, none of them the right ones, crowding the back of his throat, so he says nothing, just meets Sherlock's eyes for a long moment.

The right question comes, eventually. "Why are we here?" he asks, and Sherlock smiles.

"To spit on Sherrinford's grave," he answers.

"All right," John says. He undresses, puts on his pyjamas, and climbs into the other side of the bed. Sherlock turns out the light, and John listens to him breathe until he falls asleep.

* * *  
Sherrinford Holmes's funeral is poorly attended; John and the vicar are the only people there who are not his brothers. The vicar prays, and then Sherlock -- deliberately, obscenely, visibly -- spits on the casket. Mycroft, expressionless, does the same. John takes a deep breath, takes Sherlock's hand, and adds to the collection.

The vicar looks rather less shocked than John would have expected; but then, she is a tall woman with the Holmes look to her.

Sherlock squeezes John's fingers all the way back to Mycroft's car, stares out the window in silence all the way back to London. John thinks of the long wooden box, gone down into the dark with hot spittle and cold earth, and decides he does not want to know exactly what kind of man Sherrinford Holmes had been.

When they are home again and Sherlock has picked up his violin, he smiles at John and says "Thank you, John, for everything." John nods and takes his bag upstairs. He unpacks, slowly, listening to the storm from below.

Under the graveyard clay, Sherrinford Holmes begins to rot.


End file.
